Liquid metal marbles that are droplets of liquid metal encapsulated by micro‐ or nanoparticles are introduced. Droplets of galinstan liquid metal are coated with insulators (including Teflon and silica) and semiconductors (including WO3, TiO2, MoO3, In2O3 and carbon nanotubes) by rolling over a powder bed and also by submerging in colloidal suspensions. It is shown that these marbles can be split and merged, can be suspended on water, and are even stable when moving under the force of gravity and impacting a flat solid surface. Furthermore, the marble coating can operate as an active electronic junction and the nanomaterial coated liquid metal marble can act as a highly sensitive electrochemical based heavy metal ion sensor. This new element thus represents a significant platform for the advancement of research into soft electronics.

Controlled actuation of soft objects with functional surfaces in aqueous environments presents opportunities for liquid phase electronics, novel assembled super-structures and unusual mechanical properties. We show the extraordinary electrochemically induced actuation of liquid metal droplets coated with nanoparticles, so-called "liquid metal marbles". We demonstrate that nanoparticle coatings of these marbles offer an extra dimension for affecting the bipolar electrochemically induced actuation. The nanoparticles can readily migrate along the surface of liquid metals, upon the application of electric fields, altering the capacitive behaviour and surface tension in a highly asymmetric fashion. Surprising actuation behaviours are observed illustrating that nanoparticle coatings can have a strong effect on the movement of these marbles. This significant novel phenomenon, combined with unique properties of liquid metal marbles, represents an exciting platform for enabling diverse applications that cannot be achieved using rigid metal beads.

Sustainable sludge management is becoming a major issue for wastewater treatment plants due to increasing urban populations and tightening environmental regulations for conventional sludge disposal methods. To address this problem, a good understanding of sludge behaviour is vital to improve and optimize the current state of wastewater treatment operations. This paper provides a review of the recent experimental works in order for researchers to be able to develop a reliable characterization technique for measuring the important properties of sludge such as viscosity, yield stress, thixotropy, and viscoelasticity and to better understand the impact of solids concentrations, temperature, and water content on these properties. In this context, choosing the appropriate rheological model and rheometer is also important.

Producing biogas energy from the anaerobic digestion of wastewater sludge is one of the most challenging tasks facing engineers, because they are dealing with vast quantities of fundamentally scientifically poorly understood and unpredictable materials; while digesters need constant flow properties to operate efficiently. An accurate estimate of sludge rheological properties is required for the design and efficient operation of digestion, including mixing and pumping. In this paper, we have determined the rheological behaviour of digested sludge at different concentrations, and highlighted common features. At low shear stress, digested sludge behaves as a linear viscoelastic solid, but shear banding can occur and modify the apparent behaviour. At very high shear stress, the behaviour fits well to the Bingham model. Finally, we show that the rheological behaviour of digested sludge is qualitatively the same at different solids concentrations, and depends only on the yield stress and Bingham viscosity, both parameters being closely linked to the solids concentration.

The main objective of this study was to investigate the rheology of mixed primary and secondary sludge and its dependency on solid content and temperature. Results of this study showed that the temperature and solid concentration are critical parameters affecting the mixed sludge rheology. It was found that the yield stress increases with an increase in the sludge solid content and decreases with increasing temperature. The rheological behaviour of sludges was modelled using the Herschel-Bulkley model. The results of the model showed a good agreement with experimental data. Depending on the total solid content, the average error varied between 3.25% and 6.22%.

With rapid world population growth and strict environmental regulations, increasingly large volumes of sludge are being produced in today's wastewater treatment plants (WWTP) with limited disposal routes. Sludge treatment has become an essential process in WWTP, representing 50% of operational costs. Sludge destruction and resource recovery technologies are therefore of great ongoing interest. Hydrothermal processing uses unique characteristics of water at elevated temperatures and pressures to deconstruct organic and inorganic components of sludge. It can be broadly categorized into wet oxidation (oxidative) and thermal hydrolysis (non-oxidative). While wet air oxidation (WAO) can be used for the final sludge destruction and also potentially producing industrially useful by-products such as acetic acid, thermal hydrolysis (TH) is mainly used as a pre-treatment method to improve the efficiency of anaerobic digestion. This paper reviews current hydrothermal technologies, roles of wet air oxidation and thermal hydrolysis in sludge treatment, and challenges faced by these technologies.

The rheological properties of municipal anaerobic digested sludge rheology are temperature dependent. In this paper, we show that both solid and liquid characteristics decrease with temperature. We also show that the yield stress and the high shear (Bingham) viscosity are the two key parameters determining the rheological behaviour. By normalising the shear stress with the yield stress and the shear rate with the yield stress divided by the Bingham viscosity, a master curve was obtained, independent of both temperature and concentration. We also show that the rheological behaviour is irreversibly altered by the thermal history. Dissolution of some of the solids may cause a decrease of the yield stress and an increase of the Bingham viscosity. This result suggests that the usual laws used to describe the thermal evolution of the rheological behaviour of fluids are no longer valid with anaerobic digested sludge. Finally, the impact of temperature and thermal history have to be taken into account for the design of engineering hydrodynamic processes such as mixing and pumping.

Abstract:A liquid marble is a network of self-assembled hydrophobic powder around a droplet. The mechanism and driving force leading to the formation of liquid marbles has not been investigated. In this study, the solid-liquid spreading coefficient ( SL λ ) is calculated and the effect of the impact kinetic energy on liquid marble formation for various fluids and particles is investigated. Single drops of fluid were produced using a syringe and released from different heights onto loosely packed powder bed. The degree of powder coverage over liquid droplet after impact was photographed and analysed using image analysis. The results show that the spreading coefficients do not predict liquid marble formation, but instead that powder coverage of the drop is proportional to the applied kinetic energy. As the kinetic energy is increased, the percentage of coverage of liquid droplet by powder increases, and as the particle size decreases the percentage of coverage also increases. These results demonstrate that good powder coverage is assisted by increasing the kinetic energy of impact, which increases the size of the initial fluid-powder contact area and causes internal fluid flow within the droplet during impact and rebound, which entrains the particles and forms the powder shell. The knowledge that the level of agitation applied is an important factor in whether A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT2 liquid marble are successfully produced, is expected to facilitate progress in creating liquid marbles as precursors to a wide range of structured powder-liquid products in cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and other advanced materials.